Guest Post: Backyard Bench Before and After

Melanie and George are back with yet another before and after. This time it’s not a room, but a salvaged piece of backyard furniture. Narrated by Mel:

We bought the house inDec 2010, and noticed some junck in the backyard that we planned on getting rid of, come spring. There was an old swinging bench that was pretty beat up that was among the mess.

We planned of throwing it out when we had a chance, but as we started hanging out in the backyard, we noticed that our friend Sean seemed to like to sit on the old bench. He came up with the idea to repaint it and bring it back to life. So a year later, George and Sean got together to work on refinishing the bench.

First, they scraped away the chipped paint and removed a scroll detail on the side that dated the bench. They used a belt sander to sand down the wood planks and hand sanded the metal.

They cleaned the mold off and filled in any holes. Next, they primed the wood with left over primer from the house.

Then they spray painted all the metal black.

Finally, they hand painted the wood with 2 coats of red paint. Now the bench sits in our backyard, ready for its new life by the fire pit.